Business Travel

The talk today was much better ... on my scale this was an "acceptable". So the bad talk yesterday must have been the "fault" of the both colleagues in the auditorium yesterday ... they made me nervous

My talk at the cebit yesterday afternoon wasn't that good, for the level i demand from me, it was exceptionally bad. It wasn't my presentation, it was a presentation made by the product manager. It wasn't a bad presentation. To the contrary. However it wasn't my presentation style and i assume everybody aware of my usual style got quite aware that i felt not that well while giving this talk. Okay ... At 15:15 i have the opportunity to hold the talk again in pavillion 36 on the CeBIT fairground and i hope it will be much better than yesterday.

Das ist ja richtig grosses Sposoring, muss ja einiges gekostet haben: Es gibt jetzt laut aero.de freies WLAN am Flughafen Hamburg. Laut aero.de zwischen den Gates A17 und C16. Klingt nach viel ... ist es auch ... so knappe 20-30 Meter trennen die Gates. Zudem ... richtig hinsetzen, wenn man sich nicht ans Gate setzen will, geht da auch nicht so recht ... das ist gegenüber vom Ausgang der Airport Plaza ... dort wo jetzt alle Leute von der Sicherheitskontrolle zu den Gates gehen. Was wohl die Ladenpächter davon halten, wenn da ploetzlich zig Businesskasper rumlungern und das kostenlose Internet nutzen wollen

Damned ... i sit around at Bremen Airport. I have a company meeting in Munich today and booked a flight at 08:40 ... however the Avro RJ had some problems with the cabin pressure, thus the flight was cancelled. Got rebooked to a flight at 12:50 today ...

Was a long day today ... wake up at 05:45, flew to Nuremberg today, actually via Duesseldorf with one and a half our wait time (no problem, my office is the location of my notebook). And don't ask ... it was actually cheaper than flying directly and actually i was able to have breakfast while working in the FTL lounge in DUS. It was fscking warm in Nuremberg today .... 10 degrees less would be really nice. But it was an really interesting discussion at the customer site: Four hours live demo Solaris. Now I'm back home and the unread mail counter is down to zero.

But that isn't the point i want to make in this blog entry. I've learned a thing in such meetings: Working with Solaris all day long make let you take some features for granted. You don't think that this or that feature is something interesting because it is just this way things go for you: You talk about the virtues of deduplication, compression, and the probabilities of a false positive in dedup, but the customer is enthusiastic about snapshot shiping with ssh and zfs send/receive. You talk about DTrace, but the customer is exalted about prstat -m.

This is the basic reason, why i started to dislike Solaris presentations with slides and prefer to use the presentation program "shell". Because while working with the system on the way that comes natural to you, you give the audience a much better insight into the system. And on the way you show all the small features ...

Hmmm ... dieser Teil des Artikels "Schlafentzug im Schlafanzug" erinnert mich an eine grundlegende Regel des transkontinentalen Fliegens. Man sollte immer zumindestens eine Garnitur Unterwäsche im Handgepäck haben. Es ist möglicherweise die einzig frische Kleidung, die einem bleibt, wenn der Koffer den Umstieg nicht mitgemacht hat. Habe ich bitterböse im Rahmen meines zweiten Aufenthalts in San Francisco lernen dürfen ....

Und kann auch helfen, wenn man sich wie der Autor des Artikels bei Merian mit irgendwelchen Schickimicki-Unterhosen die Innenseiten der Schenkel runiert hat Man mag ja von Feinripp oder zumindestens irgendeinem anderen Stoff halten was man will ... aber auf Flügen ist die Marke der Unterhose wohl totalegal ...

A few weeks ago i wrote about this strange behaviour of airline passenger to storm the aircraft as there would be no reserved seats in it or no kind request to start boarding with the rows in the back of the aircraft.

There is another interesting behaviour: As i'm traveling to the smaller airports with smaller aircrafts quite frequently (Canadair, Embraer or Dash-8 ... not capable to use a gangway), apron-parking is something quite normal for me.

You aren't allowed to walk over the apron, so they use busses to shuttle you to the aircraft. And here the strange behavior starts: No matter how many seats in the bus are still free, everyone tries to stand near the doors. Even when those spaces are overcrowded nobody starts to move into the aisles of the bus except the room is that overcrowded that people are forced to move into the aisle.

I assume airline passengers would still fight to be first in the row or at near as possible to the exists of the bus when 10 passengers are booked for a A380 flight.

Given the start of the day, it had all ingredients needed for a horrible day. I was able to reach an urban train by running through the already closing door today. I was in the train after the door had closed behind me,, however but by laptop bag was outside of it. I'm really glad that the train driver saw this and unlocked the door again.

Nevertheless my talk about Deduplication at the GUUG Spring symposium was much better than the tutorial on Wednesday. For interested parties you cane download the preso, but it's just in german language and the voice track is missing.

However i've learnt a thing today: At the last GUUG Spring Symposium in 2009 i've held a two day tutorial about less known solaris features. I got the usual CeBIT cold ... the extra strong variant that put me out of order for almost two weeks. What i didn't knew until today: The people considered to make bets when (not if) i would collapse in front of the class. My appearance must have been really horrible.

Ich hab mein Blog betrogen und hab fremdgeschrieben - als Gastautor bei der lieben Local: Die Hölle - die ist man selbst.

What's so difficult to understand at the concept of a boarding by seat row. Rows 1-11 are definitely not between 12-24 and interestingly there are much more people sitting in front of me as people sitting behind me shortly after boarding. And i'm sitting row 15 (as there is no row 13 in LH aircrafts, that's just 2 rows ahaed of me with people that were actually asked to bord first). Was the same this morning.

I can just assume that some people consider themself as that important that they has to sit first. The last time i thought about it, i came to the surprising conclusion that all people will arrive in hamburg ... independent when you enter the aircraft at the location of your departure.

It's even stranger with intercontinental flights. The larger aircrafts need half an hour to board, you have already an reserved seat, even when you are late they will call you out at least two times and you will sit in this small aircraft seat for hours anyway ... why the heck is there such a crowd at intercontinental boardings right after the first call for boarding.

BTW: There seems to be a strange habit with occassional flyers. It looks like they all have bought something new right in front of their journey. Shoes that look totally new, small backpacks without any sign of usage ... strange ....

It's May 26, it's my birthday and as a birthday is a special day nothing can go wrong. Well ... nope not really ... but at first i want to thank you all for your kind greetings and congratulations.

Nope .... at first i was in Cologne today, giving a tutorial about creating a fileserver with OpenSolaris. But that was by choice. I like to fly as you know . After being grounded for months due to no opportunity to fly this was really welcome. As i wrote before ... if i get a job some day in the future flying around and doing presentations i would be a luck man.

The day started with a nice "<insert a lot of suppressed curses>" in the aircraft as a was able to spill a cup of airline tea into my lap. Thank god it wasn't my tea at home so it was hot but not hot enough for really significant burnings.

Such a day starting that way can't get a positive ending and it didn't got one. I don't know what happened to my demo installation but stuff i did a day before without problems threw interesting error messages, nothing went the way i want it and and the end i couldn't even remember how to diskpart iscsi devices on windows ... damned ... i will create a written tutorial to give the attendees the information planed for this part.

I hope my Deduplication talk on Friday will be much better ...

However i'm sitting in the Frequent Traveller Lounge now, waiting for my aircraft and i hope there will be no delays ... i wouldn't wonder about that ...

I'm still not sure about this situation. But it was a nice example how ubiquitous Blackberrys are: Flight LH71 from HAM to DUS. Message over the PA: "We've found a Blackberry. May the passengers check if they lost they phone?" At least half of the aircraft stuffing checks their bags or suit pockets but nobody stands up and asks for the phone. You really feel like a minority, when it can't be your phone because you simply don't have a Blackberry.

I assume that there was really a lost Blackberry, but this would be an interesting marketing gag ? In todays world everything is possible. A question just to show that almost all people important enough to fly are using a Blackberry? I don't need a fscking Crackberry, i have my Nokium

There is an old saying that you shouldn't write the laudatio for a day at it's beginning. I was happy about getting the flight this morning, but the problems started in DRS. As i had to get somewhere outside of Dresden, i was in need of a rental car, as it looked like a cab would be more expensive.

So i've tried to get a car from the rental company X. But they had just an S-class sedan. Thus i've opted for a different company and booked a car at the rental company Y. All was .... the problem started at the airport in Dresden: Rental Car company Y has no office at the airport. It just had an office at the town ... or to be exact: on the other side of the town. Damned. A cab? Well. I spend 10 Euro for a destination that is practially just on the other side on the airport (okay ... a little bit farther, but not much) ... for the money i would have to pay for the cab i would get a rental car. Rental Car company X they still hadn't a car ... no no-shows this day, but they offered me an other car ... will come later to it. Rental car company Z ... yes ... but just with summer tires. But i saw all that snow from the aircraft window. That wasn't really an option. Rental car company W ... the same. I looked at the cabs and thought "Damned ... i take the other car at company X". After a short discussion i got my car ... and this is the only positive about the situation: I've got an BMW X5 for almost the same price as the usual car.

Nice ... however i was half an hour late at the customer site (after getting the keys, going to the garage, learning how this automatic gear box can be forced in going forward. ). This was especially negative as this was planed as a short meeting anyway.

End of Rental company X soared in my view. Rental company Y ... well ... i will never try to book a car there again.